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Apparently, Amazon truly believed people would get in the habit of saying "hey Alexa, buy this thing" and that this would drive revenue. I'd assume Amazon of al

Apparently, Amazon truly believed people would get in the habit of saying "hey Alexa, buy this thing" and that this would drive revenue. I'd assume Amazon of all companies would know that most people prefer to compare products, read (fraudulent) reviews and look for deals before spending their money.

aetherson 3y ago
I think they imagined it would be used for well-known products that the user was already very comfortable with, where they already have done all their comparisons and are know the cost/benefit tradeoffs with. I could imagine doing that myself, but the voice interface seemed so clumsy and a little scary that I never got over the hump of trying it. There are things that we would routinely buy on Amazon without any real comparison after the, for example, 10th time we've bought them -- but we still never buy them on Alexa.
- lolinder 3y ago
  This is what it was intended for. They were pushing it at around the same time as they were pushing Amazon Dash, the buttons for ordering specific consumable products [0]. I agree fully, though: Alexa never became reliable enough for me (or many others) to trust it with a credit card. A voice assistant that constantly mishears things in the small domain in which I do trust it can't be trusted to pick the right thing out of Amazon's entire catalog. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Dash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Dash
vineyardmike 3y ago
Amazon also thought it would be a conduit for subscriptions, and a conduit for in-app purchases. I had seen market research a few years ago that basically said people don’t like buying this via voice without seeing an explicit bill/numbers on screen. That was around the time they announced the devices with a screen.
- daveguy 3y ago
  They've barely managed to keep me from pulling the plug with the unwanted assanine desperate monetitation suggestions. I was pleased to discover it finally figured out just last week how to give me my preferred news source when I accidentally say "Alexa news" instead of "Alexa news from..."
- danielbln 3y ago
  Remember the one with a camera they wanted you to keep in the bedroom to help you find the right thing to wear or some nonsense. Madness.
doctoboggan 3y ago
Honestly, for a while there I was actually doing exactly that, mostly to re-order things I order often, but sometimes to just order the top result for a certain query. I have since mostly lost faith in Amazon as a brand and no longer trust their reviews or products to be of any decent quality. So I guess I would say that it's not Alexa that failed here, but the amazon brand itself.

aetherson 3y ago

I think they imagined it would be used for well-known products that the user was already very comfortable with, where they already have done all their comparisons and are know the cost/benefit tradeoffs with. I could imagine doing that myself, but the voice interface seemed so clumsy and a little scary that I never got over the hump of trying it. There are things that we would routinely buy on Amazon without any real comparison after the, for example, 10th time we've bought them -- but we still never buy them on Alexa.

lolinder 3y ago
This is what it was intended for. They were pushing it at around the same time as they were pushing Amazon Dash, the buttons for ordering specific consumable products [0]. I agree fully, though: Alexa never became reliable enough for me (or many others) to trust it with a credit card. A voice assistant that constantly mishears things in the small domain in which I do trust it can't be trusted to pick the right thing out of Amazon's entire catalog. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Dash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Dash

vineyardmike 3y ago

Amazon also thought it would be a conduit for subscriptions, and a conduit for in-app purchases. I had seen market research a few years ago that basically said people don’t like buying this via voice without seeing an explicit bill/numbers on screen. That was around the time they announced the devices with a screen.

daveguy 3y ago
They've barely managed to keep me from pulling the plug with the unwanted assanine desperate monetitation suggestions. I was pleased to discover it finally figured out just last week how to give me my preferred news source when I accidentally say "Alexa news" instead of "Alexa news from..."
danielbln 3y ago
Remember the one with a camera they wanted you to keep in the bedroom to help you find the right thing to wear or some nonsense. Madness.

doctoboggan 3y ago

Honestly, for a while there I was actually doing exactly that, mostly to re-order things I order often, but sometimes to just order the top result for a certain query. I have since mostly lost faith in Amazon as a brand and no longer trust their reviews or products to be of any decent quality. So I guess I would say that it's not Alexa that failed here, but the amazon brand itself.